W520, gaming, battery slice, dock

[Gnimble]

Hi everyone,

I plan to get a W520 as a replacement for my older laptop and have a few questions, which I've put in bold below.

The W520 will be my main computer since I do a lot of image editing, the 95% color gamut of the FHD display sounds promising. I occasionally play games, mainly WoW, Starcraft II and maybe Diablo III when it comes out. Should I get the Quadro 2000M? The current laptop I'm replacing would be the Asus Rogue G50VT with the NVidia GeForce 9800M GS with 512MB video memory. How much slower would the Quadro 1000M or 2000M be compared to this video card?

If I were to get a battery slice, would I have to disconnect it to use the dock? If not, does the dock charge both batteries? I plan to use it for the next 6-8 years as a portable computer since I travel often.

Thank you,
Gnimble

[davidhbrown]

From various comments, you may still want a better monitor on your dock for image editing. But 95% gamut is still going to be a lot better than the 60% you find in many other screens. The 6-bit aspect of it would concern me in particular if I didn't have a decent screen hooked up to the dock.

Notebookcheck shows the Q2000M and Q1000M right next to each other at the bottom of the "Class 1" video adapters, currently. They actually show the 9800M GS in the "Class 2" of video adapters which means that the Quadros may offer an improvement. However, they don't have actual benchmarks for the Quadros yet. Their expectation for gaming is that the 9800M GS is somewhere between the two. (Go to that URL, click the checkboxes for the cards you want to compare, then click "restrict" near the top.)

Of course, if you do heavy Photoshop work, you may want the extra CUDA cores of the 2000M anyway. [Edit: See comments below; as pointed out by commander, Adobe's CS5 code does not use CUDA.]

For 6-8 years of useful life, I'd suggest throwing the kitchen sink at it, honestly. Buy everything you think you might ever want. Excepting things that are easily purchased third party and installed by you: RAM, bigger/faster HDD, maybe mSATA. But I'm not sure I believe you're going to last 6-8 years... the Asus Rogue G50VT was first available less than two years ago, according to Amazon! (Though I wonder about that Core 2 Duo chip... looks like you got one of the last before the i3/5/7 were available for mobile.) I got almost 5y on my first Windows notebook, then 3y on my T61p. If you have a business need for latest/greatest, 3 years is probably more realistic than 6-8.


The battery slice does have to be disconnected to use the dock. You can charge it with an external charger (around US$120), but that charger doesn't come with a power supply and the 170W one doesn't look like it will fit, so if you want to charge a slice battery while docked (or other spare), that may be a pricey convenience.

[commander]

Of course, if you do heavy Photoshop work, you may want the extra CUDA cores of the 2000M anyway.

Photoshop does NOT using CUDA. Photoshop is using OpenGL.

[Dummvogel]

According to Notebookcheck the 1000M is the same Chip as a GeForce 425M and the 2000M is the same as a 460M.

If you want to play games get the 2000.

[davidhbrown]

Photoshop does NOT using CUDA. Photoshop is using OpenGL.

That is certainly true for Adobe's current CS5 code. I was thinking of some third-party plug-ins such as those benchmarked on Tom's Hardware and the specified 6-8-year timeframe which (hopefully) could see some CUDA-accelerated filters in CS6/7, at least.

[MikeM]

I use Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 and it will make use of both the CUDA cores -=and=- the Intel Quick Sync video features and my W520 is not even here yet. Looking at 1-2 years out, as new software emerges, those extra CUDA cores will be handy and it's not like you're going to go out and slap a different video card in your W520. If you have the cash now, get the Quadro 2000M.

[Gnimble]

Thank you for your replies. I think I will buy as much as I can afford. I just quit my job and from my new line of work, I will no longer have an income so this is probably last laptop that I will purchase from what remains of my bank account before I close it. When I say 6-8 years, I am really hoping it will last much longer than that. I'm hoping the durability and the build of the Thinkpad will hold up after many years. I love gaming, since I'm still a kid at heart although I'm far from being one! I may play a few games donated to me by my brothers in the future, so the possibility of playing them is why I'm considering the 2000M. I will miss those subscription based games though.

That's too bad that the battery slice has to be removed to use the dock. I was hoping there would be connectors underneath to so that you don't have to constantly removed it. If the 9 cell do last 7 hours as seen by the Keith Comb in the only review I was able to find for the W520, then I guessed that should be manageable.

According to Notebookcheck, the 425M is slower than the GeForce 9800M GS, but not by much. Passmark gives a score of 616 for the 425M and 705 for the GF 9800M GS. The GT 460M has a passmark score of 1190, but the GT 460M has a 192bit bus instead of 128bit of the Quadro 2000M. The different optimization of the drivers for applications in the Quadro will probably reduce the score further. I hope by not much.

Whenever I game with the GeForce 9800M GS, the laptop sounds like a cyclone with the GPU temperature fluxtuation between 84 and 92 degrees Celsius. The idle temperature of the GPU is around 72. I used to have a Radeon 4850x2 and that sounds like a beast too, but the framerates in games are out of this world.

During my high school years decades ago, I recalled a question that was asked, "If you were to be stuck in an island for the rest of your life, what book would you take along?" It is funny that I'm in the same dilemma but instead of book, it would be which laptop I would take along!

Thanks again.

Cheers,
Gnimble

[makaveli559m]

I wonder what is the rating on one of those machines I got a T500 recently and the rating is 5.9. the graphics card is a 6.0 gaming rating
_________________
Lenovo Thinkpad T500

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64-bit
Intel Core2 Duo CPU P8600 2.4Ghz
6.00 GB DDR3 RAM
320 GB 7200 RPM HD
ATI HD 3650/ Intel X4500
15.4 inch 1680x1050 LCD
CD-RW/DVD-RW Multiburner

[commander]

No problem sir

[Gnimble]

Thanks Commander. It seems like the GeForce 9800M GS on my old Asus G50VT is not too shabby either. The Graphics is 6.6 and the Gaming Graphics is 6.6. I was hoping for a little bit more since the spec of the 2000M is better than the older 9800M GS although the memory bus is twice as small.

Quadro 2000M
Pipelines: 192 unified
Memory Bus: 128 bit
Memory type: DDR3
Memory: 2GB
Power consumption: 55watt
Technology: 40nm
Notebook size: medium

GeForce 9800M GS
Pipelines: 64 unified
Core Speed: 530Mhz
Shader Speed: 1325Mhz
Memory Speed: 800Mhz
Memory Bus: 256 bit
Memory Type: GDDR3
Memory: 512MB
Power consumption: 60watt
Technology: 55nm
Notebook size: Large

Cheers,
Gnimble

[blackomegax]

1000M is 96 fermi cores and 45 watts.

it's certainly no slouch.

the 48 core in the T420 can run GTA4 nicely.

2000M is simply more futureproof, especially for a 1080p screen.